I have a AA in Business Administration with a concentration in management, a bookkeeping diploma and a administrative assistant diploma and I still have a hard time getting an administrative assistant job. As for experience I would say i have the bear minimum because of where I live. What do I need to do in order to get an administrative assistant position?

It sounds to me that with your education you should be able to qualify for an entry level assistant position. You’d qualify for more with more experience, probably. The main problem at the moment is the economy. I know people with years of quality experience that have been looking for jobs for over a year with no luck.

You didn’t mention if you are getting interviews or not. My recommendations are based on whether or not you are. If you aren’t getting many interviews, the problem may be with your resume. If you don’t have much assistant experience, then you’ll need to tweak your resume to make your administrative knowledge and education stand out. I always recommend the same book to everyone for building a resume, and that is Regina Pontow’s book, Proven Resumes: Strategies That Have Increased Salaries and Changed Lives (affiliate link). I used this book myself a number of years ago to revamp my resume, and saw the number of interviews I was offered increase dramatically. It’s written with strategies for everyone, whether you have no experience or way too much.

If you are getting interviews with no job offers, then I recommend the book Job Interviews For Dummies (affiliate link), another book that I’ve used myself. It has a lot of great information about how to conduct yourself at an interview and strategies for every phase of the interview process.

Both of these books helped me tremendously in getting interviews and converting interviews to job offers. I highly recommend both of them.

Maybe you should brush up on your spelling and if your location is limiting travel further or move.

Rebecca (1 comments) June 29, 2012
9:08 am

I realize that this is an older post, but I couldn’t resist commenting. Jeannine hit the nail on the head. Your spelling and grammar are very likely your stumbling blocks. It is “bare” minimum. There is no minimum for bears. You reference “a administrative assistant diploma” in one spot and in the same sentence “an administrative assistant job.” The correct usage is “an” as the word administrative begins with a vowel. You also need to brush up on comma and semicolon usage. It doesn’t matter how many degrees you hold if you can’t communicate effectively and properly.